Peninsula All-star Football Ciamp

Ex-aide: Spurrier's Fun

Former Hampton High football star Marvin Brown remembers the day in 1986 when he and his Duke Blue Devils teammates played Georgia Tech.

More to the point, he remembers standing on the sidelines with a mixture of awe and envy as he watched the Georgia Tech quarterback drop back, time after time, and fill the air with passes.

"They were airing it out all day,'' he said. "I didn't know you could throw the ball that much. It was fun to watch.''

Brown, one of Duke's starting receivers, remembered dreaming about what it would be like to play in such an offense. And, a year later, his dream came true. Georgia Tech's offensive coordinator, former Heisman Trophy- winning quarterback Steve Spurrier, agreed to become Duke's head coach.

"Our prayers were answered when we heard he had signed on to come to Duke,'' Brown said.

Brown, who played one season for Spurrier and served as his receivers coach for two years at Duke, got out of the football business after Spurrier accepted the head coaching job at Florida in 1990. But the memories from those three years he was around the Washington Redskins' new head coach will last a lifetime.

"I could tell you a lot of stories about Spurrier,'' said Brown, who took time from his job as a personal sports training consultant in Raleigh, N.C., to speak to 180 youngsters who participated in the sixth annual Peninsula All-Star Football Camp over the weekend at Christopher Newport University.

And he did, beginning with Spurrier's first spring practice.

"Four of our (returning) receivers were injured and I was the only one who was healthy,'' he said. "So Spurrier put an ad in the newspaper for receivers and four of five walk-ons showed up. We also had some young quarterbacks, so Spurrier ended up throwing the ball a lot.''

Brown also remembers some of the young quarterbacks complaining that Spurrier was making them look bad. He was, afterall, just several years removed from his career as a backup quarterback in the NFL. But that was Spurrier, Brown said. He was a hands-on coach, and he had the ability to demonstrate what he preached.

"When he got mad in practice,'' Brown said, "he would stop everything, get behind the center and show everybody how to get it done.''

Those three years were fun times for Brown, especially in 1989 when Duke won its last ACC title, sharing it with Virginia. But it was also an exciting time as Brown watched Spurrier teach a radical offensive philosophy in which practically every play was designed to score a touchdown.

"Spurrier approached football as if it were fast-break basketball,'' Brown said. "He wanted to see if he could outscore everybody. He told us many times that the idea was to score touchdowns, not get first downs. When he got the quarterback thinking like he did, he got excited because he knew he could score anytime he liked.''

Spurrier's three years at Duke are little more than a footnote in a career that was overshadowed by the next 12 seasons he served as Florida's head coach. During that span, the Gators averaged 35 points, 310 passing yards and 460 total yards per game. And his offense, which was known as "Airball'' at Duke, became the "Fun 'N Gun" at Florida.

But, for a few modifications and fine-tuning along the way, Brown said the offense he saw as a player and assistant coach at Duke was the same one he saw Spurrier employ at Florida.

"His playbook was pretty extensive even back then,'' Brown said, "but, unlike a lot of coaches, he wasn't afraid to make changes. He would draw up plays in the dirt on the sidelines. I drew up a few plays in the dirt, too. There were times it looked like sandlot football.''

But there was a method to Spurrier's madness, Brown said. He had an obsession about running the perfect play, every play, even if it meant making up plays as the game progressed.

Spurrier also preached two other concepts that he took to Florida and promised to bring to the Redskins -- he called an inordinate number of long passes each game, and he never worried about what the other team's defense was doing.

"He said he liked to throw deep seven or eight times a game,'' Brown said. "He said you may not score, but you had to keep the defense loose. He also said you can't worry about what the other teams do because you don't know what they are going to do. He said we can only worry about what we do.

"As players, especially the quarterbacks and receivers, we loved playing for him.''

It's a love affair, Brown said, that continued at Florida and should carry to Washington.

Warner Hessler can be reached at 247-4648 or by e-mail at whessler@dailypress.com